Answer this question Flag as Flag as How can I tell if there is someone else on my computer? I have a "hidden network" on my laptop, in addition to my known networks, and am concerned that it belongs to hackers. What should I do?

How to Secure Your Home Router

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Warnings You cannot view another network's factory-assigned name without access to the physical router. Edit Related wikiHows. Article Summary X 1. Did this summary help you? Article Info This article was co-authored by our trained team of editors and researchers who validated it for accuracy and comprehensiveness. Operating Systems In other languages: Is this article up to date?

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By continuing to use our site, you agree to our cookie policy. Co-Authored By:. Related Articles. Can you tell us which parts were out of date so we can update them? Thank you for your feedback! Real hackers are going to be using tools like Kismet and Aircrack to figure out the SSID before they crack your network, so whether or not a particular tool is showing the right data is beside the point.

How to Find Your Wireless Network Key or Network Password

You should also note that you can use this tool to figure out how to change the wireless router channel and optimize your Wi-Fi signal. Now that you know how simple it really is for people to find your ID, wouldn't you rather use the default networking configurations where you can easily select the network from a list? Why go through all the steps required to connect to a hidden network? For a network that is broadcasting, all you have to do is click twice. And that's just Windows 7, which makes wireless networking easy—having to go through all the configuration screens on every single one of your devices is just ridiculous.

FAQs & Troubleshooting

This isn't quite as much of a problem since Windows 7 came along, but back in the Windows XP days, there were quite a few connection problems when you were using a hidden SSID, not to mention getting disconnected and connecting to the wrong network. Basically, Windows would automatically try to connect to a less preferred network that was broadcasting instead of a preferred network with a hidden SSID—the only way around it was to disable automatic connection to the broadcasting one, which was annoying as well.

The same thing holds true with some other devices—I've seen problems with Android phones, and you can just do some quick Google searches to find loads of other issues that are all resolved by not using a hidden SSID. There's another problem with hiding your wireless network name: When you hide your wireless SSID on the router side of things, what actually happens behind the scenes is that your laptop or mobile device is going to start pinging over the air to try and find your router-no matter where you are.

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So you're sitting there at the neighborhood coffee shop, and your laptop or iPhone is telling anybody with a network scanner that you've got a hidden network at your house or job. Microsoft's Technet explains exactly why hidden SSIDs are not a security feature , especially with older clients:. A non-broadcast network is not undetectable. Non-broadcast networks are advertised in the probe requests sent out by wireless clients and in the responses to the probe requests sent by wireless APs.

Therefore, using non-broadcast networks compromises the privacy of the wireless network configuration of a Windows XP or Windows Server based wireless client because it is periodically disclosing its set of preferred non-broadcast wireless networks. The behavior is a little better in Windows 7 or Vista as long as you don't have automatic connection enabled—the only way to be sure that you're not leaking the network name is to disable automatic connection to wireless networks with a hidden SSID.

Microsoft's explanation:. The Connect even if the network is not broadcasting check box determines whether the wireless network broadcasts cleared, the default value or does not broadcast selected its SSID.

I need to find my SSID number | Tech Support Guy

When selected, Wireless Auto Configuration sends probe requests to discover if the non-broadcast network is in range. When it comes to wireless network security, there's really only one rule that you need to follow: Use WPA2 encryption, and make sure that you are using a strong network key. If you're not using encryption, or you're using the pathetic WEP encryption scheme, it doesn't matter whether you hide your SSID, filter MAC addresses, or cover your head in tin foil-your network is wide open for hacking in a matter of minutes.